The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

We just bought a new car. Our meager attempt to prime the economic pump. I’d list off all the things this vehicle is capable of doing, from self-activating braking system to rear view camera, but it would be easier to list what it doesn’t do. You can’t crank down the windows. And without a computer, good luck diagnosing anything past a burned out light bulb. It doesn’t fly — at least I haven’t found the button that switches into Aero Mode — but essentially it’s a Jetson ride, mostly computer driven, sensor controlled and definitely futuristic.

And yeah, it cost what my first house cost. $24,000. That house was a used ghetto hacienda, built about 50 years before I won it bidding in a sealed auction offered by HUD. Course back then I was buying cars for 2 or 3 hundred bucks and yeah, the windows cranked up and down, although some didn’t work at all. Maybe this a story about inflation or maybe upward mobility or even, I hate to believe it, conspicuous consumption, I’m not sure. But it definitely is one about the American Dream of my days. A house, a car, a family with 2.3 kids. A job, a career, a one wage-earner family.

Mostly gone now, replaced by two wage-earners who make less than Ward Cleaver. The Beaver is hooked on Game Boy, Wally’s a heroine addict and June has become the primary breadwinner now that Ward has been laid off. They’re mortgaged to the hilt, retirement is postponed indefinitely now. I suspect they voted for Trump first go-round, figuring what did they have to lose?

Second go-round, I’m betting they did again. They still got plenty to lose. Maybe the American Dream was diminished before but now it seems like it’s on life support.

My new car has self-activating brakes when I’m headed into peril. America apparently doesn’t. Maybe too many of us are like this old fool, watching the rear view and not the detour ahead. I suspect when we get where we’re going, the levy’s gonna be dry.